Thursday, March 08, 2007

Adobe to Release Two Versions of Photoshop CS3

by Jim Dalrymple, MacCentral

Photoshop is about to become a one-two punch. Adobe will unveil two versions of its flagship image editor when it announces the rest of its Creative Suite 3 bundle on March 27, the company plans to disclose Thursday.

Photoshop CS3—which is already available as a public beta—and Photoshop CS3 Extended will share many of the same features, but the Extended version will target some new markets for the company. [...] The new markets Adobe is reaching out to with Photoshop Extended include professionals in architecture, engineering, medicine, and science. Photoshop CS3 Extended includes the same tools as Photoshop CS3 plus a new set of capabilities for integration of 3-D and motion graphics, image measurement, and analysis.

“At one point in time, we considered separate versions, but we found a lot of overlap in the features that these people needed,” Connor said. “That led to another type of strategy for Photoshop. Rather than create a new application, Extended is a superset of features that can specifically benefit people in those markets....”